I have a few bad habits when it comes to sewing. One of those is that I HATE pinning, especially patterns. I could go buy some pattern weights; however, I figured that I probably could do it myself for much cheaper. I headed to the hardware store and picked up some flat washers. Follow along below to find out how I made my own.

DIY Pattern Weights

I wasn’t completely sure what size I wanted so I bought three different sizes at the hardware store: 3/8, 1/2 and 5/8. Each of these packs was $0.98; for less than $6 I was able to make 10 weights in different sizes.

The first step is to pull out your glue gun and attach the washers together. The smaller sizes I created stacks of 4, in the larger size I did 2 stacks of 2 and a stack of 4 as I wasn’t 100% sure what I wanted and this way I had options.

After the washers were glued together I used ribbon to wrap around each stack. To seal the end, simply add a dot of glue at the end of the ribbon. This isn’t necessary on the smaller ones because the ribbon is quite tight in the inner hole.

I tried them out on a couple items I needed to cut and they work great. They definitely work a lot better than throwing my cell phone on the pattern and hoping it works.

If you are a sewer – do you pin everything or are you always looking for shortcuts as well?